Exilian

Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Rome - Total Realism => Mods, Maps & Game Add-Ons - The Bazaar => RTR 0.5 Imperial Campaign => Topic started by: ahowl11 on April 04, 2014, 11:32:26 PM

Title: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 04, 2014, 11:32:26 PM
I'm going to take advantage of this day off.. It seems as if this mod is living and dying based off my activity. The more active I am, the more the mod churns and people are active. When I am away or tied down in RL it seems like the wheels stop and everyone becomes dormant.
Guys, this is a community project, not a one-man mod with a bunch of followers. Feel free to start working on something, all you gotta do is let me know beforehand so we can discuss the specifics, but I am pretty lenient and liberal with that you all do, you've seen that with how me and Sloth work.
I'm not upset or anything, but I just want to remind everyone that if you have time, find a way to contribute somehow. Find things wrong with the current version, come up with ideas, start taking up a modding trade such as coding or scripting. The bigger this mod gets, the harder it will be for me to work on it by myself. I thank Bercor for his work and Mausolos for his research, I thankb257 for always being able to test and I thank the Sloth for implementing his ideas. Everyone else (if you still come online), feel free to contribute in any way possible.

We need to get some previews going. Aquila and Mandoni, I think you two should get together and start brainstorming about some stuff to make a preview out of. Mandoni is talented with video and Aquila is on the content staff at TWC, I'm sure you two could come up with some cool stuff!

We also need more ideas, and discussion for the future. I will post more extensively on that in Bercor's Ideas thread.

This is RTR guys, I know none of us were on the original or most recent RTR teams, but we have a name to live up to. You don't need to wait for me to tell you what to do to contribute :)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 04, 2014, 11:40:02 PM
Well, I can work in the new menu. Just made this one for Silmarillion Total War:
http://dai.ly/x1kzm9l

Just need some good images for the background...
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Jubal on April 04, 2014, 11:43:00 PM
Bercor, if you're working with the Silmarillion guys, any chance you could tempt them to at least post about the mod over here?  :)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 04, 2014, 11:48:56 PM
Yeah, of course. Open the thread!
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 12:29:53 AM
Not bad at all. It's possible to incorporate the M2TW menu look right? We should do that, especially for the faction selection screen, with a screenshot of the faction's best/coolest unit.
You can choose the images and layout, I trust your judgement
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 12:34:49 AM
The coolest unit screenshot for every faction isn't possible. All of the rest is.

I tried to find something nice but I couldn't, so any help is appreciated. Mausolos said that he would look for something, eventually...
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 01:00:35 AM
Ah that sucks.. Yeah I don't know of much either
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Mausolos of Caria on April 05, 2014, 02:08:01 AM
Yeah the problem with ancient depiction is that they are always... you know... most of them have only survived partly. So it's difficult to find wide pictures, instead of artistic impressions of ancient cities or pictures of ruins. Or Renaissance paintings of antiquity, but for me, they rather add Renaissance than ancient atmosphere.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 02:10:40 AM
It doesn't need to be a depiction...
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 02:16:12 AM
I'm particularly fond of what the RTRVII team did
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 02:18:53 AM
You would need a proper artist that could draw, for something like that.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 02:26:32 AM
The Lord Drake?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: The Lord Drake on April 05, 2014, 02:27:40 AM
For the record, there is no such thing as a "proper artist". What we call "art" is based on perception, to you a few dots and smears on a wall might not be art, but it probably is to the person that made it and likely is to someone else out there. Whether you can draw or not has nothing to do with you being an artist.

Any hoo, back to the topic. Are we set on making an image, or can we make do with one found, at least for a time?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 02:32:47 AM
For me personally as long as it can tie into the mod I'm fine. For instance the startup loading screen is really good. And like I said, RTRVII had some nice loading screens that they used before.
Another possibility is a video in the background.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 02:34:30 AM
Bah, you understood what I meant. I used the word "proper artist" to contrast with me, which I'm not. And I was refering to an artist within the mod senses (2d artist, 3d artist, etc), not in the more general Art sense.

Anyway, no, we don't need to create a new image, we just need one can be used as background (a nice one, preferably).
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Mausolos of Caria on April 05, 2014, 02:36:44 AM
Oh damn hell Lord Drake, you are reminding me of the torture of science history  ;D ''Science pictures are pictures, but are they just depictions, or are they art as well? How can they depict something if the thing they are going to depict only becomes real by the depiction?''

But seriously, if you want to draw or an image I don't know how I could help. Maybe we could use an original base and then someone works it into a background picture by adding colour, other images, blurry effects whatever? I could still find basic background pictures that would need to be adjusted:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: The Lord Drake on April 05, 2014, 02:42:52 AM
Well at least I'm good for something. :P

Any way, I can't really draw very well. My sister is brilliant but she doesn't draw in a style that is useful to us. If we can find an image to use I can edit and tweak that til doomsday though. A video is a good idea too, however I personally have no experience with video editing.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 03:40:41 AM
Quote from: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 12:29:53 AM
Not bad at all. It's possible to incorporate the M2TW menu look right? We should do that, especially for the faction selection screen, with a screenshot of the faction's best/coolest unit.
Well, actually in the RS2 faction selection, there's a "map" image and also a large image as well. So presumably these can be any images.

I'll get screenshot for you.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 03:46:35 AM
I remember that but yes please do
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 06:56:33 AM
(http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad81/Alavaria/2014-04-05_00001.jpg)

Those two pictures, you can imagine uses for something like that. Though someone better than me has to figure out how to use them in the first place.

You could use that method (eg: the large image) for something showing cool factional units
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 05, 2014, 07:20:08 AM
I like it. I like it a lot, but I am concerned because I don't want to copy RS2 haha
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 07:27:13 AM
I actually have no clue how it's done, it might be that the map is as you see in vanilla RTW, but the big image etc is all just one large "background" that is made to look like an image over a background...
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 11:28:27 AM
Ah, that is possible, if we make like RS2, one campaign for each faction, then we can put the pic of that specific faction unit. What is impossible is having the cool unit as in MTW2, you change the faction icon and the picture change.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 02:18:41 PM
Does the map thing change per faction selection?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 02:20:31 PM
Yes, but the map has a specific entry in the Rome.LNT.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 02:48:45 PM
what, it isn't just an image file?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 03:23:58 PM
The map is just an image file, however, the entry assigned to it in Rome.LNT is unique, and that's what matters.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Alavaria on April 05, 2014, 03:31:33 PM
Ok, so let me see here. I loaded up RTW vanilla and there's that map thing. When I select different factions, I see a different map image.

Call these MapJulii, MapScipii, MapBrutii

Can you take an imagefile of a Macedonian pike line, and replace MapJulii with that, -then- an imagefile of Seleucid cataphacts and replace MapScipii with that, etc?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 03:41:58 PM
You could, but then, from what I've been told, you couldn't have the map, since you can't duplicate the entry. However, there's only one map entry, not one entry for each faction map.

I'm talking with Aradan right now at TWC, hopefully he'll give me an answer.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 03:43:39 PM
What about this for the main menu background?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Grande_Ludovisi_Altemps_Inv8574.jpg)

It's from the 2 century A.D., but most people won't even know it.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 05:26:20 PM
(http://i.gyazo.com/4cd99abe5945fbbc2542d4419ff12559.png)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Jubal on April 05, 2014, 05:39:31 PM
I'm not sure the text stands out enough, you want some sort of bevel/glow around it so the letter outlines aren't clashing against the background.

Other than that, I very much like it.  :)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 05:50:47 PM
Yeah, the text was going to be changed anyway.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 05, 2014, 11:28:33 PM
(http://i.gyazo.com/167f60ec6b7e9b94ed55d15ee56dc70e.png)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 06, 2014, 05:49:48 AM
Not bad Bercor!
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Jubal on April 06, 2014, 11:26:53 AM
Much clearer :)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 06, 2014, 12:22:09 PM
Any suggestions?

In regards to the cool unit pic thing, I've talked with Aradan and he said that the only way to do that, since you can't change the map as I thought, is to replace the vanilla faction leader portraits in the menu, keeping the same name.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 06, 2014, 06:17:23 PM
(http://i.gyazo.com/48e36398b0beb27bb23073f7adfa0372.png)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: The Lord Drake on April 06, 2014, 06:18:51 PM
Not personally a fan of the scroll, but it does stand out better.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 06, 2014, 06:25:27 PM
Yeah, that was my thinking. If you find something better I would gladly change it.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: ahowl11 on April 06, 2014, 06:52:18 PM
I think you two will make a good duo for this sort of stuff, because I have no idea what to put haha. We will need to take a look at the other menus as well though. It's possible to have other backgrounds for those right? Or just one?

Also, don't include the 'P' in the RTR insignia. The RTR Project is the name of our team or company if you will. The mods that we release will simply be under RTR. There won't be any numbers behind it, just simply RTR.

For example we are currently working on the RTR Imperial Campaign and we will be releasing the 1.0 version next. Later there will be the RTR Punic Wars Campaign etc. So if anything, put a little "Imperial Campaign" below the RTR insignia. :)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 06, 2014, 08:35:18 PM
How it looks in-game:
(http://i.gyazo.com/01cbd94b87488ac0b4b694f49e945b78.png)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: b257 on April 06, 2014, 09:10:20 PM
Might want to make the "Imperial Campaign" Lighter, kind of hard to read given the Background.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 06, 2014, 09:16:31 PM
Don't worry, in the game it's very readable.
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: XxMSWShadowxX on April 07, 2014, 02:35:49 AM
Very nice Bercor thats certain to dazzle a few players! :D
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Ballacraine on April 20, 2014, 06:19:57 PM
I like it.

Perhaps make the spindles on the top & bottom of the scroll a little more ornate?

Balla.  8)
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 20, 2014, 07:49:20 PM
How so? Can you give me any examples?
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Ballacraine on April 22, 2014, 08:51:06 PM
Not sure I can offer up any examples, but, for instance, maybe make the heads silver or gold, wrapped with laurels?

Balla.  :-\
Title: Re: Plan of Action
Post by: Bercor on April 23, 2014, 11:25:11 PM
New splash:
(http://i.gyazo.com/d810dd38db90138054af9597e020dd5a.png)